


Meetings Through Time

by Takan_Morfin_Riddle_Lestrange



Series: The Story of Harry and Natasha [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Assassins, Character Death, Childhood Friends, F/M, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase One Compliant, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 06:58:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18686443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Takan_Morfin_Riddle_Lestrange/pseuds/Takan_Morfin_Riddle_Lestrange
Summary: The story of Harry and Natasha, told through their meetings.





	Meetings Through Time

**Author's Note:**

> A little plot bunny that popped into my head yesterday after watching the first Avengers movie again. No spoilers for Endgame in comments - I haven't seen it yet!

 

The first time they meet, neither of them remember it. She is too young, and he is too cold. Their memories are taken from them over the years until all she can remember is the snow-covered ground, and all he can remember is the dying sun.

The first time they meet, he’s the eight-year-old boy that is lost and oh so alone in an unfamiliar place. She’s the six-year-old girl who is, unknowingly, spending her last day with her parents.

They meet in her country. The park in St Petersburg is dusted with a light sprinkling of snow; just enough to make the ground sparkle in the dying light of day. The boy is curled up, alone, under one of the benches at the park. It isn’t that the girl hasn’t seen anyone sleeping under – or on – a bench before, but she’s never seen anyone so young do it. It is this fact that makes her ignore her parents’ instructions about these types of people; and she listens to the crunch of her footsteps as she runs over to him.

The boy and girl end up playing together until the sun is all but gone from the horizon, no words exchanged between them, not even their names. As a last parting gift before heading home, the girl gives the boy two things; her coat and her name.

“Natalia.”

* * *

The two of them have changed significantly by the time they meet again. Natalia is now Natasha, the twelve-year-old girl who serves her country. He is no longer the lost little boy she once knew; he is now a fourteen-year-old marred by grief and struggle.

This time they meet in his country, not hers. A park once again their meeting place. Alone, always alone, the boy sits. The park equipment around him damaged, old and dirty. The girl, waiting for her instructor to collect her, lets instinct guide her to sit next to him. The meeting seems familiar to the both of them, but they ignore the feeling. Once again, no words are exchanged between them, content to sit in peaceful silence with each other.

The wind is the only sound around them, rustling against the leaves of the trees. The swings begin to creak and groan, as the wind pushes them. The sound captures the girl’s attention as she moves for the first time since sitting down. The boy mirrors her action as he looks towards the source of the sound too. By the time either of them moves to leave their bubble of peace, the sun is beginning to set once again. The dying sun prompts the boy to stand and start to make his way out of the park. This time it is he that leaves the girl a parting gift; a plaited leather bracelet he’d just made, and his name.

“Harry.”

* * *

Their third meeting is considerably shorter and more dangerous. Harry is nineteen and full of anger; expelling it by hunting down people who he thinks deserve to die. Natasha is seventeen and no longer in training; they’re after the same target.

It is Natasha who notices the intruder first. It is difficult not to recognise the boy – Harry – she met with all those years ago. And it doesn’t take her long to realise that he is after her kill, but something stays her hand from interfering. His execution of their craft is haphazard and sloppy compared to her own, but she recognises the passion which guides him. He trips an alarm on the way out and that is when she makes her move; bursting out of the air vent and fighting back to back with him to survive.

When the chaos is over, they stand facing each other in a room of dead and dying bodies. Their faces are splattered with the red lifeblood of those around them, their eyes burning with bloodlust. Emerald meets emerald and it is she who snaps herself out of it first. He soon follows and watches her warily, watching her for the tiniest movement.

All she does is unclasp the necklace she had made to match his gift of the bracelet. The shining silver spider pendant catches his eye as she hands it over. When he looks up from examining his gift she is gone, her name a whisper on the wind.

“Natasha.”

* * *

Their fourth meeting takes place barely a year after their third. They are once again after the same target, but this time it is a competition to see who makes it there first.

It is obvious that Harry has had some sort of training in their time apart. He is still nowhere near her level, but he is much better than many she has seen. She has been keeping tabs on his whereabouts, but she is still surprised to see him here. She is even more surprised when he shoots her a smirk across the crowded room. Her fire-kissed hair is hidden underneath a box of platinum blonde hair dye, and she was supposed to be almost invisible when disguised like this.

The two of them seem to gravitate to each other from opposite ends of the room, meeting in the dancefloor and moving together seamlessly into a dance. Once again, no words are exchanged; but she can see the necklace she gave him around his neck, just as the bracelet he gave her is around her wrist.

Their eyes lock again, as they did before, only there is no bloodlust this time. They seem to have a nonverbal conversation and break apart simultaneously heading back to their respective corners. When she looks back, he is gone, and she holds in a curse as she heads to her targets’ bedroom. She gets there in time to watch Harry slit his throat – an inelegant, but practical method. She watches the light drain out of the targets eyes before meeting the eyes of her – enemy? Nemesis? Rival? – of Harry. Neither of them knows who moves first, but they are both aware of lips meeting and hands roaming, grasping.

It’s a quick, brutal act when he takes her against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist. They are both injured by the end of it, her with bruised handprints on her hips, him with bloody scratches on his back.

His gift to her this time is a bruising kiss followed by a knife to the leg. The hiss she lets out is equal parts pained and aroused. The knife is as beautiful as he is, she thinks; black leather around black steel. The strangest symbol – a circle enclosed in a triangle and bisected by a line – the only glint of silver on the blade. She looks up to ask what it means but he’s gone.

Silence greets her.

* * *

Their meetings continue like this; meeting more and more often until they’re seeing each other every month. Sometimes she is the one to kill the target, other times it’s him; but they always fuck near the body and take it in turns to give a gift. She builds up quite a collection, all of it marked with the strange symbol from the knife. His collection always contains some reference to her, either her hourglass symbol or the spider that gives her, her name.

It becomes a routine, a surety that the other will be present when the target dies. It’s why, when Natasha doesn’t show, Harry gets caught.

* * *

It was a stupid mistake, he thinks. He’d been distracted all night, unable to sense her presence at all. It was why he hadn’t noticed the hidden trip sensor until it was too late. He’d fought them off but there were too many of them; far more than the intel had reported. He’d half-expected her to burst out of the air vent the way she had on their first shared job.

She hadn’t.

The torture feels never ending. There is no natural light in this place, and no way for him to escape. He loses himself in his head. Anger stoked with every injury, every beating, every scar that he is given; sure that she must have known it was a trap. He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, but he knows it has been far too long.

It is the sight of the leather bracelet on the female guard who delivers his next meal that allows him to recognise her. He bares his teeth and snarls at her, but as her eyes flick to the camera, he realises that she must have a plan. It is the first time he doubts that she set him up.

She returns not long after, hands caked in blood as she releases him from his chains. Weak he may be, but he was still strong enough to grasp her by the throat and hold her against the wall. Her eyes widen, but it’s too late. She’s trapped.

He doesn’t know what to say, how to express the betrayal he felt at what she’s done. He stares at her, willing her to see that what she has done has broken him inside. As their eyes lock, the emotion swirling in her eyes captivates him. The despair at his injuries; the fear of finding him dead; the pain of his hand around her throat; the arousal at their position. But it is the next one he sees that makes him pause.

Love.

For people such as them, love is a dangerous emotion. It interferes with their work and leaves them vulnerable to attack. It is only as he looks into her eyes and finds love reflected back at him, that he realises that he feels the same. He releases her and lets her help him limp out of the building.

Once again, they say nothing.

* * *

It is slow, but they return to the way things were. Competing over who can kill the target the quickest; the bloodiest; the most conspicuously; the quietest. They never run out of things to compete over; it becomes their way of flirting, communicating when words let them down, as they so often do between the two of them.

This bastardisation of a relationship is one of few words; they have said maybe twenty words to each other since they shared their first battle. The one thing that never changes is the lust that runs through the two of them after a kill. It is always hard, fast and brutal. Injuries are common place, but the people they work for don’t question it. As long as the job is done.

* * *

She doesn’t tell him that she joins SHIELD. To be fair, it doesn’t seem relevant at the time. She is still killing people, the same people he is. She is still drowning in the red from her ledger. Her methods don’t change, just her employer.

Their meetings continue, and she never answers questions that her backup – because she actually has some now – asks. Barton is particularly insistent on knowing Harry’s identity, but she never tells. He must see how she feels one time because he closes his mouth and nods. He holds a frown as he does so, but he never asks again.

She’s also more careful in explaining how she comes by her injuries, the stab wounds, bruises, scratches and gunshot wounds. Injuries that can’t be explained away by a fight, especially considering that she’s supposed to be the best of the best.

It’s after she is stitching up a cut on her own ribs that she realises she really ought to tell him; if only to make her life easier in explaining her injuries.

* * *

They don’t realise things have changed until she is suddenly protecting the target he is supposed to kill. It sounds silly, but Natasha had never considered that she’d be against him. They competed for everything, but this wasn’t competition. This was a fight; and they were on different sides.

Harry quickly realises that she is no longer like him; doesn’t crave the high that comes from killing, the adrenaline that pumped through their veins as they fuck next to the body they just killed, in danger of being caught at any moment.

They fight.

He loses.

The knife that he had given her so many years ago, was plunged into his chest. The shock in his eyes gives way to amusement. Their game had finally caught up to them.

She pays no heed to the principal behind her, Barton can deal with him. She keeps a tight grip on Harry’s body as he slumps to the ground. He grins up at her as she cradles his head in her lap. There is blood staining his teeth as he coughs.

“Always knew you’d be the death of me.” He muttered, grinning at her as she felt tears slip down her cheeks.

“I love you.” She whispered, closing her eyes in an attempt to stop her tears.

She leant into the bloody hand that cupped her cheek, looking at him one last time.

“Remember me.” He begged, locking their eyes together so she could see him clearly. She saw the love he felt for her and the forgiveness for what she had done. He knew he would have done the same thing. She mustered a smile as she cradled him close, feeling his body still, knowing he was gone.

Only then did she choke out a reply.

* * *

The wind tugs at her coat as she stands under the tree. The weather seems to have sensed her mood; the air cold and the sky cloudy. It won’t be long until it starts to rain, she knows.

She looks down and sees the ordinary grave stone that’s average in every way possible. She bends and traces the black lettering. It had been years since that fateful day. Life had moved on, the world hadn’t stopped turning, even though she thought that her heart had frozen solid in her chest. Her ledger had continued to grow larger and larger, nothing to stop her turning into a machine that felt nothing as she did her job.

She withholds a sigh as she places the bouquet of red lilies on top of the headstone. As always, she opens her mouth to speak but closes it almost immediately. They had never been good with words.

The buzzing on her wrist alerts her as to the time; she has a flight to Russia to catch. Giving one last lingering look at the headstone, she turns and walks away; the only image in her mind of two children playing in a snow-covered park, in the light of a dying sun.

Maybe she’d find love again someday.

* * *

 

_Harry Romanov  
Always_

 

* * *

 

  

> _“If only we could know the reason why they went_
> 
> _We’d smile and wipe away the tears that flow_
> 
> _And wait content”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry! I swear that this was supposed to be a happy little fic about two broken people who fall in love and live happily ever after! My brain sort of ran away with me...


End file.
